Does buying a home in the UK
give you residency or a visa?

Three separate questions: ownership, entry and residence

• Owning a home is a property matter: when your purchase completes, the property is yours.
• Entering the country depends on the documents you carry at the border, including a visa if you need one.
• The right to live here is an immigration matter of its own.

None of these follows from the others. Owning a home does not let you enter, and being allowed to enter does not let you live here.

GOV.UK, the UK government’s official website, sets out who has the right to reside in the UK:

• British and Irish citizens
• People with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme
• People with indefinite leave to enter or remain
• People exempt from immigration control

People here on a visa do not have the right to reside; they can stay while their visa is valid. Property ownership is not on the list.

Why the investor visa is no longer an option

The Home Office closed the Tier 1 (Investor) visa to new applicants of all nationalities, with immediate effect, on 17 February 2022. Today only people who already hold it can make applications linked to it: to settle permanently, or to bring family members to join them.

One detail matters: even before it closed, this visa was not obtained by buying a home. According to the Home Office announcement, it was based on investing in the share or loan capital of active, trading UK-registered companies.

GOV.UK’s current list of work visas includes no route based on buying a home or any other property. The Investor visa appears on that list among the visas closed to new applicants.

The Ankara Agreement visas are closed to new applicants too

A note for Turkish nationals: the Turkish Businessperson and Turkish Worker visas, which come from the Ankara Agreement (ECAA), are also listed on GOV.UK as closed to new applicants.

The route now continues only for people who already have this permission: those granted it on or before 31 December 2020 (or who applied by then and were granted later) can apply to extend, and certain family members can join them. These permissions rest on running a business or working, not on owning a home.

Visiting as a homeowner

If you do not hold British or Irish citizenship and you are coming on a Turkish passport for tourism or to visit family, the GOV.UK visa checker currently shows that you need a Standard Visitor visa. As a Standard Visitor you can usually stay for up to 6 months.

The visitor rules do not allow you:

• To work
• To live in the UK for long periods through frequent or successive visits
• To make the UK your main home

Owning a home here does not change those rules.

If you plan to come to see your home, view a property or attend a stage of your purchase, check on the GOV.UK Standard Visitor page that your plans fit what visitors are allowed to do, and if you are unsure, ask an immigration adviser before you apply.

“Non-resident” is not the same as “no residence permit”

When you buy, you will come across two different ideas of being resident. Both are tax tests, and neither looks at your visa.

For stamp duty (SDLT), the basic rule for an individual buyer is this: if you were not present in the UK for at least 183 days in the 12 months before your purchase, you are non-UK resident for that transaction and pay a surcharge.

HMRC states that nationality, citizenship, the right to reside and the UK’s visa policies are not relevant to this test, and that it is separate from the income tax test below. Joint purchases and married couples have additional rules. You can see the current rate in our stamp duty calculator.

For income tax, residence is decided by the Statutory Residence Test. It looks at how many days you spend in the UK in a tax year and at ties such as work and family, and one of its tests asks where your home is. The answer depends on your circumstances; it is a question for your accountant.

In short, being resident for tax does not give you a residence permit, and not having a residence permit does not on its own make you non-resident for tax.

Ask each question of the right person

Immigration advice is regulated in the UK. GOV.UK says that all immigration advisers must be registered with the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA, formerly the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, OISC) or be a member of an approved professional body.

You can find registered advisers through the IAA’s adviser finder, and solicitors who give immigration advice through the Law Society. Before you start, check the adviser’s level and whether they charge a fee.

Questions about the purchase belong to a different team (see who does what in the buying process):

• Budget
• Costs
• Timing
• Signing documents from abroad
• Preparing your source of funds

Those you can bring to us and to your solicitor. If you are thinking about finance, our guide to a UK mortgage on Turkish income explains what lenders look at.